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DURHAM – Experts say they’ve seen little job growth this year amid a slow economic recovery.
But other local officials have pointed to small businesses that sprouted up in downtown Durham in the past year as well as company expansions in the area as positive economic news.
In downtown Durham, there has been net growth of 41 new companies, said Bill Kalkhof, president of the revitalization-focused organization Downtown Durham Inc. at its annual meeting in December, counting since the group’s last meeting.
New businesses that have sprung up in the year in Durham’s City Center include the cheese shop Reliable Cheese, the restaurant Bull City Burger and Brewery, the bakery Loaf, and restaurant Geer Street Garden.
There were also companies that found new homes in the American Tobacco campus in downtown Durham, and news of expansions and groundbreakings in the Research Triangle Park.
Still, John Quinterno, a principal with the Chapel Hill research firm South by North Strategies, said he’s seen little job growth in 2011.
Durham’s unemployment rate of 7.1 percent in October, the latest available, was “unacceptably high” given its historical rates, he said. In December of 2007, unemployment in the city was at 3.7 percent.
The city’s rate in October was also higher than it was in 2010. The city’s rates were also higher in the months of September, August, July and June year-over-year.
“By any objective measure, that is really an unacceptably high rate,” Quinterno said of the city’s October estimate. “What private sector job growth we have had, a significant portion of that has been canceled out by (public) sector contractions,” he added.
While these may not be like the good ol’ days exactly, John Graham, a professor of finance at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, said things are moving in the right direction.
Graham, director of the Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey, said chief financial officers polled in the fourth quarter showed improved hiring and capital spending outlooks, even though the country is still on a slow-growth trajectory.
The survey showed the officers plan to increase their number of domestic, full-time employees by 1.5 percent on average over 12 months. It also found that U.S. firms plan to increase capital spending by nearly 8 percent in the same period.
Graham also said the results have shown an improved outlook for borrowing – difficult during the recession – with one exception. The smallest companies with 100 or fewer employees still said they’re having a hard time borrowing.
Graham said he believes personally that consumer spending has picked up again, which is helping the overall economy.
“There’s companies doing reasonable well, we’re willing to consider hiring, build that extra plant do in terms of capital spending, refurbish machinery, (on) the strength of consumer spending picking up, that’s really helped the U.S. this quarter,” he said.
